Otemma glacier

The Otemma glacier and its proglacial area is a study site extensively visited by the AlpWISE group (IDYST-UNIL) in the last few years. In 2021, our team joined the field camp for a few weeks to finalise the testing of the drone-based GPR system. In 2022, we took entire part into the camp organisation and logistic. We spent a week acquiring GPR data using the last version of our drone-based GPR system with the objective to get new insight into the hydrology of the glacier.

In only four days, we acquired more than 460 profiles laterally spaced by 1 m, for a total distance of more than 112 line-km of GPR data. This is, to our knowledge, the largest 3D GPR dataset of such density ever recorded over an alpine glacier. No results will be displayed on this page as the study is currently under work and no articles have yet been published in scientific journals. However, please see below a few photos of our fieldworks there, and stay tuned!

Life at the camp.
Individual tents with the glacier in the background.
Office desk.
Recording high-quality GPR data.
Edith Sotela Gamboa cleaning the dye tracers bucket.
Johanna Klahold managing the fluorometer.

All photos taken by Bastien Ruols.